


let me (please) interpret history, in every line and scar

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, excessive metaphors, medical use of opiates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 16:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19088347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: consider Anakin Skywalker, who will presently be made anew





	let me (please) interpret history, in every line and scar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Snarling, Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774454) by [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs). 



> title from the Belle & Sebastian song "Slow Graffiti"

this twisted wreck of burned flesh and tortured bones is, hard as it is to say, a vulnerability. The one vulnerability he permits.

funny to say, he has never quite yet gotten used to being "Emperor"; he is ever the queen's, the people's servant, with his own agenda. And what does it make of him that he should come, within his own warped heart, to adore his once queen's man? 

_she_ is apt to die:

bodies, desperate for want of some organ or another still attack it and... Anakin is riven with the Force, larded with it like roasts with needles, exquisitely saturated in a thing which he does not understand how to control or even shape, like a magnet suspended in a strong field practically crackling with electricity so strong the air reeks of ozone, the very oxygen split by it. That he should want and half-want _not to_ \--well, there are two ways to be safe: preserve your treasures as best you can up in ivory towers, behind, perhaps, dragons _or_ wean yourself of wanting, treasure nothing. 

Anakin wants her like water, like... what was it Plagueis was always on about, ATP, like oxygen, and at some lesser level he _does not_ want her, does not want to host profound imperfections as a Jedi. Pulled two ways, and the wanting rarely prevails. 

save...save on a conscious level. And the boy _had_ saved him. 

perhaps hunger was a better analogy, the ascetic on the mountain consuming little to nothing, fervently conquering the want. 

(Damask does not slot readily into that schema, wafting ethanol and a hint of formaldehyde into the mind's nose.)

Palpatine is, for once and the only time in his life, friend, and one with whom Anakin Skywalker will inhale like a drowning man, presuming there is air to be found, sweet oxygen among the murky depths. Among the smoke of Mustafar.

bitter water he is, tainted and apt to turn the stomach, but a thready grasp on life all the same. That by rights Anakin should reject, but, embittered himself, charred and bruised, it is more essential, more palatable than the daunting feast that would be Padme Amidala _and her child_.

they say starvation deprives of digestive power, that one long starved will reject the very life giving food set before them. 

it is _that_ the Jedi have done, but what that makes him, he does not know. Probably one who gleans nourishment from nothing anyone would deem the staff of life, clinical balances and chemical names and emulsions of strictly the necessaries like a disgusting pablum, like what Plagueis was reduced to consuming for nourishment in the last years of his life. No tonic greens, no galvanizing hot and bitter caff, no delicately acid berries with a kiss of sweetness, rich cream scones, or the savor of fermented sauces.

(and oh, that is literal, will be made manifest anew, for Anakin Skywalker. 

for _Darth Vader._ )

but passion, nutrition for the psyche, it is nonetheless, even if it is all reduced to the same taste as bile vomited up from an empty stomach 

Palpatine can no longer look the part of the kindly old man, now, but is made monster. The evil chancellor trope in the lined and degraded flesh, etched by the Dark Side's corrosives. Or, well, technically, somehow by his own Sith lightning, his favored weapon, he whose powers had first and ever made him feel like the wind whipped, electric chaos of a storm.

* * *

Anakin is deeply drugged, and there is still, even now, nothing to improve over the poppies, or at least their ilk. His breathing slows with the extent of it.

even the Dark Side does not compare but unlike Plagueis, Palpatine has always preferred to be level-headed.

but then again, the drive towards oblivion, towards sleep unto death might be understandable in these circumstances. Too much of such intensity, of any intensity, even the _Force_ could drive one mad. Perhaps there is an art to their mastery that skirts exploitation of that resource, that makes recourse instead to much derided wits and words and sheer willing to be wrecked to channel it. Even if, circling back, that courts madness, even death.

he never bewitched Anakin, never laced his voice with the Force as the Jedi do, only plainly peppered his words with ideas, given the knowledge that the boy was so badly suited for the Jedi and so passionate--yes, uncomprehending then, but in full bloom and wanting for an understanding of the cosmos that gave him personal power, that spoke without caveat of breaking chains.

he lied, but so did the Jedi.

only he had left aside the constraints that would prefer this boy be a tractable hero, a sheep to be led without question, without complaint, to be abandoned and put down when no longer useful.

Anakin will be _historical_ in his hands, even if there is some irony in the notion that the boy will have to be taught how to pursue the order in the galaxy that does not jeopardize their status, that does not give the Jedi an inch to stand on.

but attachment is good for convincing, convinced Palpatine a hundred things that repulsed him later, all for want of paternal approval.

he will be gentler than Cosinga and kinder than Damask and the boy sleeping here while his mangled body waits to heal is--is dearer to him than was ever wise. For his sake, and Anakin's--but what worse can he do, than the Jedi's leavings, the ones trapping him here in the medical ward, at Mustafar?

**Author's Note:**

> there's a chance it'll be continued? but I also wouldn't count on it.


End file.
